I would like to introduce Catherine Hanno, a native of Berkley, and an example of very constant practice. Catherine began studying with Suzuki Roshi in 1967, and has lived, spent many years at Tathahara, and many years at San Francisco Page Street, and two and a half years at Green Gulch, And worked through all the positions and worked in the bakery in San Francisco. And so we are very fortunate. And now leads two groups. One in Monterey and one in Santa Cruz. And she lives in Santa Cruz. We're very fortunate. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Large group. How many of you are here for the first time this morning?

[01:15]

So you have come and had meditation instruction? Yes. I'm really happy to see your new altar, which I've been reading about. Paul did this? Paul's assistant, actually. Paul's assistant. Stan? And what did you do with the old altar? It's at the Zendo in Jamesburg. Well, that's close. Zendo at Jamesburg. This is Suzuki. Suzuki Roshi. widow came to visit our area a week ago. She came to stay in the Soquel and visited the Monterey location and Santa Cruz.

[02:20]

And when she came to the Santa Cruz Zendo, she went, oh, it's like Berkeley. Because we have two houses and a gate and a path between the houses. And the entrance to the Zendo, one of the houses is the Zendo. It's been converted to a Zendo. when she saw the layout and the grounds and the way the garden looked. Just the same feeling on a quiet street. I'm really happy to have an opportunity to come back and sit in this zendo with you. It has been some, I don't know, a couple, two, three years since I've had the opportunity to practice with you. And this is full moon. And we have renewed our bodhisattva vows this morning.

[03:24]

What I thought I might talk about, we haven't yet figured out how to have somebody in this seat without talking. to bring you some of the study we're doing down in Santa Cruz and Monterey. I've been talking about Shantideva's guide to the Bodhisattva way of life and drawing on the commentary, the Tibetan commentary, Meaningful to Behold. These are both very inspiring, very moving texts, and I offer them to you as something you might want to look into and study. As Meili was reciting my pedigree, I have been practicing, it will be 25 years next month.

[04:35]

And I would say most of that time I have been practicing what we call insight practice or wisdom practice. Those of you who are first-timers today, the instructions are to take this posture and to follow the breath, attend the breath, or watch it, or be present for it, and watch the arising of thoughts and impulses and feelings, consciousness, and to let it go, just to watch it and let it go. So the practice has been the of becoming sensitive to intimate what knowledgeable about the arising and passing of those elements that we call mind and body. When we do this we notice that mind and body are not solid, are continuously changing,

[05:38]

hard to get a hold of, even though what we tend to recall, we might recall consistencies and patterns. But if we watch very closely, we'll see a tremendous flow and flux and information that's much wider than what our memory grabs and remembers. So Joanna Macy has this wonderful expression, we are patterns that perpetuate themselves. And when we observe from our mind and body in meditation, if we're lucky, we'll get beneath the patterns and to see the fullness of the energy, the mental energy and the material energy, the body energy that's arising. So this is what I'm calling inside practice, we're actually attending to, watching, getting information about our patterning, our preferences to hang on to, to identify, attached to, define ourselves by certain voices inside, certain attitudes, certain preferences for feeling, reactions, we're reactive.

[07:06]

things arise, experiences arise, and we react to them. And those preferences for reactions and defining ourselves by our reactions are what we end up identifying as self or ego. So that's the work we've been doing for many years. I've been doing for many years at Zen Center, and somewhat recently we have been introduced to, or Tibetan teachers have come by, Sort of off to the side, there's been an introduction of something called heart practice or compassion practice. These are not polarities. When insight arises as to the reality, the true nature of our experience, that it's empty, that it's just arising and passing, and it's not solid, When that insight arises in us around our thoughts, our perceptions, our feelings, that these are just creations, these are just habit energy that we've gotten stuck with and thought our experience was so-called real, solid.

[08:21]

When we have that insight that these experiences are empty, formless, not solid, The reaction, the arising to that awareness is compassion. There is a tremendous shift in the body, a softening, soft mind, soft body, what we might call a real opening of the mind and body to ourselves and to our experience. So insight and compassion really arise together, but you can start. with insight or you can start with compassion. These are kind of trigger words. I just want to say that because I want to talk a little bit about the Shantideva text, the material, and it may be a little different from what practices many of you have been doing.

[09:24]

So I just want to say that it's all Buddhism, it's all the same field of study. but it's coming a little more actively to our experience. I was, the other night, talking about watching my angry mind this past week. And since it's, you know, the holiday season and we're bringing forth peace on earth and all these wonderful attitudes, you know, somebody said, oh, it's really appropriate to talk about fear and resentment and anger. feeling. So I was watching my angry mind. And I was watching, it was a very rich experience because I wanted to let it go. I was in the spirit of watching it arise and drop, arise and see the emptiness, and see the patterning of it, see the habit energy of it. And I was able to do that, I was able to see, this is just, each time angry energy kept pulsing.

[10:31]

see that this was habitual patterning and release it and there would be a relaxation in the body and then back again would come the grabby mind that wanted to hang on to it. This is who I am. This is who Catherine is. Catherine has a hurt or a grievance or a resentment. So it was very interesting to watch the kind of the going back and forth of this mind that wanted equally to drop because the relaxation and the release and the opening, soft mind, soft body, the benefits of dropping were pretty evident. But there was a little benefit on the other side. I want to hang on to my hurt. I want to hang on to my anger. Come back. So the benefits are letting go. of our definition of what happened. And the difficulty is we've already made a pretty deep commitment to separate self.

[11:44]

Separate self is alive and well over here. So these practices that Shantideva is offering us is to walk the path between the thought arousing the thought of enlightenment and actually taking on the Bodhisattva life. I'll do it. Somebody has to do it. Somebody has to give up this attachment to separate self, this attachment to belief that protecting myself is the only way to go and walk the path to giving up protection, defenses, in the body, in the mind, and actually trusting in the goodness and the protection, the fullness of the universe. And you know, to do this, you've just done the ceremony, taking refuge, making confession on my ancient twisted karma, invoking the lineage, the ancestors, homages,

[13:01]

the bodhisattva vows, four vows. We've just done the ceremony. We have to do the ceremony. These first two or three chapters of the book is actually presenting the ceremony. These are the elements of opening the mind and body to the conversion from the demon of self-cherishing, as the Tibetans call it, the demon of self-cherishing, to other cherishing. And as we say these vows, I vow to save all sentient beings, what it really means is that I am really more interested in each one of you becoming liberated than I am in my own liberation.

[14:07]

Really. I am not. I give up my aspiration. I give up my hopes. My intentions are to present myself as completely as I can so that you get it. You find some release from suffering. Some And what we mean by release from suffering is release from attachment to self. That's the fundamental suffering in Buddhism, the fundamental delusion that there's an actual self here. And there's something really to protect. So the beginning of the practice is to investigate that which is not real. We investigate the production of that which is not real. We watch to see what an ego is. When do we create an ego? We create an ego when we get angry. When we conjure up hurt and resentment, and we want to get back.

[15:10]

My first impulse was, I want to hurt back. I've been hurt. But wait a minute. I'm a teacher down here. That's pretty interesting. That's an old pattern. I don't need to do that. And it doesn't work. Anger doesn't work. Getting back doesn't hurt. It just keeps the cycle of delusion. So, the first thing is to... There is a path. and there's not a path. There's a way, and there's no way. So all these contradictions are kind of wonderful for us, because when we start sitting and somebody says, there's nothing to attain, there's no place to get, that's right.

[16:18]

Twenty-five years later, there's no place to get. It's hard to believe that, because why would we do this? And we don't know why we do this but some part of us knows some part of this has some deep sense that Underneath the squabbling mind The mind that's that collecting insults and injuries and blessing on a few people and Competing with a few underneath that mind. There's a deeper mind that knows that that it's all one life, we are living one life together, and that each one of us is a different version. Slightly different version, that's what makes us interesting. Each one is a unique individual version of the same mind-body phenomenon.

[17:22]

The practice that this text gives us is to exchange self for others. What's really interesting is that we want to drop our attachment to separate self, our belief in separate self, and yet attachment comes back. Habit comes back. So this text allows us, gives us specific practices to work with. One of them is exchanging self for others. And I wanted to tell you that we tried these out and they were very helpful. The text says basically our interactions with each other are based on either seeing somebody as better than you, somebody as equal to you, a peer, or somebody as inferior in some way. That's how we line the universe up, right? Somebody tells us what to do, we tell somebody what to do, or we judge them, they judge us. And over here we're a little competitive.

[18:44]

So, they suggest taking one of these relationships, or taking one that kind of comes to mind, that's a little troublesome, or you've picked up that you're missing something, there's a little grit in it, you know. you imaginatively project yourself into the other person. Most of the people did this with somebody that was kind of below them in some hierarchy. And you become that person and put yourself in their mind and body and you look back on yourself and you speak to yourself. So people did this exercise. It's really interesting, people. took the time, and we did this in the group, took the time to project into somebody that worked for them or an old relationship or something that had been troublesome and to a student and to imagine how that person perceives us and to open up to the reality of that person's experience and life

[20:00]

and difficulty and confusion and perception of this person up here who's not quite paying attention, who's too busy doing other things that are more important, you know, can't completely turn toward and have a full relationship. Everybody who tried this, and we did it together, felt like they had that fundamental relationship had really shifted. They had seen that person in a way they'd never been able to see them before. And their sense of self, which had become kind of protected, self-important, was released. It shifted. So it's a kind of, these practices are a kind of antidote to pride, especially if somebody is a little bit lower than you on a hierarchy, you feel a little better than me in some way, or you have certain privileges. So this practice counteracts pride and attachment to self. And if your particular nemesis is a peer relationship, a competitive relationship, take that one on.

[21:11]

You can do it at home, or you can do it when you're going for a walk, or you can do it out in the park. Give yourself some space to actually project into the mind and body. of the person where things aren't just flowing smoothly, where there's not harmony, where there's misunderstanding, and feel back what's arising in that person's mind and body. So that was one of the practices. The other one we've been doing has been the practice of making offerings. You know, for the Bodhisattva ceremony, we offer incense and flowers and light So Dogen tells us, Dogen, probably most of you know the teacher, Dogen Zenji, the Japanese monk who brought this tradition to Japan from China. And it's his tradition we're following today, and we're the beneficiary of his brilliance and insights.

[22:15]

Dogen says, leave the birds to the season, You can offer the flowers to the wind. Instead of accumulating experiences to enhance ourselves, instead of gathering whatever, collecting things, give away. Give away the moon. Give away the autumn breeze. Give away the winter chill. actually don't try to hang on to. Give it back to the universe, give it back to all sentient beings. These are, and the bowing, so there's making offerings, and there's prostrations, and there's taking refuge, practices we did today, which are practices which open taking

[23:20]

doing prostrations, touches the ground and is a mark of respect. And these preliminary practices get us ready for confession. So confessing is, yeah, I did it. I have an angry mind. I have a jealous mind. I have a greedy mind. and really touch that mind, really experience that mind, experience the energy of that mind. I've had ants running around my kitchen now for some months, and I get angry when I see those ants. And ever since I've been practicing watching angry mind arise, it's been helpful just to watch the ants and not want to get rid of them. or get rid of them in a smashing way. Anyplace but here.

[24:29]

So watching the energy of that mind is... You want to know the energy of aggression, energy of violence. You have to watch the aggression of that mind that arises. Whether somebody cuts in front of you on the freeway, somebody edges you out of line someplace, One King, King Prasenajit, said to Buddha, how can I stay in my life, take care of my kingdom and enjoy, you know, the blessings of my situation and still practice? And Buddha said, rejoice in the attainments of others Cultivate bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, continue to think about raising the mind of enlightenment, and dedicate the merits.

[25:35]

So these three practices we can do in our own domestic situation, our own lay lives, we can. Again, this is a giving away practice, rejoicing in the merits of others. This again counteracts jealousy and competitiveness. Somebody got the position you wanted, or somebody expressed a behavior, some attainment. It's the mind of, oh, that was pretty good, but. Yes, but. The mind that hedges. The mind that undermines appreciating what happened. The mind that reserves criticism. So, watching that mind, just I think, for me this is one of my central practices now. Rejoicing in the attainments of others, rejoicing in the merits of others, or celebrating the merits of others.

[26:38]

Happy that somebody got the position that you wanted. Really rejoicing. Finding out how to do that. What would it take to really do that? Could you, even you, do that? wanting to separate and take a little of it back, wholeheartedly offering that. The second is continuing to keep the mind of enlightenment, the thought of enlightenment, the mind that wants others to be liberated before myself, that wants to become liberated myself only in order that others may not to become liberated and then to be better than other people, than to be admired or recognized as having achieved something. To do it in order that I can then be with you in a way that liberates you.

[27:42]

I'm free of my own attachments, free of my own self-clinging, so that I don't come on solid and fixed and mobilize your solidity, your attachment to yourself. Third one, dedicating the merits, giving it away. Every time we come to sit Sazen, we dedicate the merit of this period of Sazen to the universe, to Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Whatever kind of period it is, we are not out to have a good period of Sazen, the best period we ever had, the worst period How do we find this mind? This mind that willingly turns over whatever experience, whatever beneficial experience.

[28:43]

I had a really good session. I want to hang on to this for a while. Get something out of it, some insights maybe. Turn all that over. Turn all that over. The long-term benefit of this is that we don't have to protect ourselves because you're all protecting me. And I'm protecting you. So instead of each of us protecting ourselves, we're all looking out for each other. I mean, that's a whole different level of energy exchange. Last thing I want to do. In addition, in conjunction with this, I've been reading a wonderful book which Some of you may have heard of the new book by Ken Wilber, about Grace and Grit. It's about his five years with his wife, and ten days after their marriage, they found breast cancer.

[29:49]

And this is the story of her, what do you call it, they kept recurring, it kept recurring, and went to the brain, and she died. So it was about five years. But as this happened, as she, as her body, and this is a real, real love affair, real attachment, love with each other, to each other, with each other. As her body got sicker, she transformed that experience into finding out how to let go of the body and to give it away, to transform her attachment to the body to something else. So because these practices sound a little far out for us, she used one of these practices at a time when she was quite desperate.

[30:55]

She was in Germany undergoing advanced chemotherapy. and had lost a gold star, a five-pointed gold star that somebody had given her, which she took as a good luck omen. She was still hoping, all of these five years, she was still hoping and thinking that this will be the last recurrence, this will be the last chemotherapy, this will be the last radiation. And then something would come back. So as this happened, she had to find a way to be with her body and mind in a new way. And on the occasion of this loss of the five-pointed star, this is what she did. I meditated, it was lost. I meditated on truly letting go of the gold star, both its physical being

[31:58]

and its good luck qualities, and on sending these qualities out to others. As I tried this, I could feel the strength of my attachments to my parents, to the friend who made the star, to the circumstances of getting the star, to the idea of good luck, to the original significance of estrella, which is Spanish for star. Anyway, her name, she changed her name at some point due to a dream. So she's to the original significance in my dreams years ago that led to my changing my name. Deep tendrils of attachment, of clinging, made clear by the shock of losing the physical symbol, intensified by the fact that it was also a valuable piece of jewelry. And so I worked over and over to give it away, just give it away.

[32:58]

I would visualize the star itself in front of me, multiply it in my mind many times, then scatter all these shining golden stars far and wide so that others benefited from their beauty, their good luck, and their healing properties. Every time I felt the pain of the loss, which was often, every time I unconsciously reached for the star around my neck and found it gone, I would do this. It was not easy, but it was the only thing that helped. Sometimes in my mind I would very specifically give the star to each person in sight. Sometimes I would give it to each person in the restaurant we were in, specifically visualizing it around each person's neck. Sometimes I would visualize it shining over the heads of people on the streets. Sometimes I would visualize scattering millions of the stars all over the globe, myriads of them twinkling in the sunlight as they fell slowly to Earth to bring light into others' lives.

[34:11]

This exercise made me more acutely aware of other forms of clinging or selfishness, like wanting the last bit of the best cheese on the picnic or the last sip of wine. or the room with the best view. The loss of the star highlighted these tiny, moment-to-moment forms of clinging, of desire, of grasping. And then, as I did with the star, I could practice letting go by making a gift of whatever it was I craved to someone else. It was a very interesting experience. With this practice, I don't always like what I see in myself. I'm not always quick to notice the clinging. I am by no means always successful in letting go, nor do I expect to be really. I feel a kind of understanding smile appear when I notice that I just grabbed for the best morsel or become aware of mean thoughts swirling in my head.

[35:25]

or hear unkind words simply pop out of my mouth in spite of my best intentions. I hope I'm learning to become aware of these moments in a way that the mercy I feel outweighs the self-judgment. I often think of a saying from Saint Paul, something like, the good that I would, I do not. The evil that I would not, that I do. It reminds me that I am not alone in this struggle either, and it strengthens my sense of compassion for what it is to be human." And she says at the end, after three days, she said to her husband, you know, it's only been three days, but I really think I'm almost over losing the star. It helps to have extreme conditions to encourage us to do this practice, but we don't have to wait until we're dying of cancer to start developing the conditions for letting go of our attachments to our experience, our angry mind, our greedy mind, or our confused mind.

[36:56]

And take time. It'll be fun. You're really hanging on to something. Maybe you're angry. You don't give it to other people, so they'll be angry. But you kind of float it out there in the universe. You let it float downstream. You let them freeze. Try it. We're all very creative people. We could all create images and examples for letting go. So that's some of what we're doing now. Thank you for the opportunity to share that with you this morning. And maybe there is a little time for questions. Mayling? Could you say something? You said that you proceeded with these investigations in a group. Could you say a little bit about how that worked? Well, yeah, we're having a class on Shantideva. And the way I'm doing it is to have a series of four classes, and then a little break, and then another series of four classes. So people come.

[37:58]

We've met in somebody's living room, because we don't have our own Zendo in Monterey. When we met in the Zendo in Santa Cruz, it felt a little formal for a kind of intimate sharing. So I think next time we'll do it in the house next door. People just, and I, we looked the material together, most of the people have purchased the book, and I asked them to try on these exercises. I actually asked them to think about it, and would anybody like to share it? And two people said yes, they would. So they, is that what you're asking? Yeah. So one person began to imagine she had a, She goes once a week to folk dancing or something. So she imagined somebody who she felt wanted to dance with her, but maybe didn't think he was good enough because of the way he dressed and the way she dressed. So she imaginatively described his experience of being there and not feeling free, and then saying, and you think you're hot stuff prancing around in your outfit, and you

[39:11]

You know, so her whole, both sides of her, you know, her ego, her psyche, what she was, yeah, I do think I'm hot stuff in this world, but I get dressed up to come to this dance, and I've got partners, and I don't wanna dance, you know, I'm not sure I wanna dance with you, you look a little, and then he, you know, well, I don't, what was it with him? I'm not sure he's employed, and he's living kind of marginally, and he doesn't have the same manners, maybe. So she gave this person a beautiful life. She actually allowed his life to come forth, which, when it was just on the edges of that experience, was a kind of nuisance or irritant for her. So when she did that, that changed her, she let that sink in. or experience of him. That's just one example.

[40:13]

Is that what you're asking? The text, Meaningful to Behold, actually has little paragraphs that you can say. And for the most part, we invented our own, because they didn't quite seem to fit the situation. So I wanted to talk to somebody that I considered above me, hierarchically. And I had to invent my own experience of that, because what the text said didn't fit. Because this text is 8th century India. So it's very beautiful. It speaks to our timeless essence, I think. But some of the local conditions, you need to make adjustments. What happened?

[41:18]

She had put it in the pocket of a jacket or something. It was taken to the cleaners. The cleaner found it, and a few days after she did this exercise, it came back there. But at the time that she did the exercise, she thought it was lost. I think they're really interesting and really useful. It seems like you also have to be careful to recognize that the person that you're creating is just your imagination of this person. You mean when you're projecting it? Right. Because if you start doubtless one that they're still different. I think what the experience was that their heart opened to the person, that for whatever reasons their heart was closed to the person.

[42:27]

It was a burden, the relationship was some kind of burden. So I think people knew that they were inventing, but it's sensitive. You know, for a person who's very busy running around, kind of on top of the heap, you don't notice everything, you only notice the stuff right in front of you, so it's very helpful if people say, hey, you think you're pretty good, you think you're hot stuff, you know, when you allow that thought to arise, that's very helpful to slow you down. And that's, I think, what happened, people slowed down and their hearts turned. And what they said was that they were more open to the person. Nobody said, the person didn't turn out to be what I thought, But it just, the psychological, the truth of people's imaginative creations felt like people were touching those parts of themselves that they needed to touch. Yes? I just wanted to ask you about the books that you're using.

[43:31]

Meaningful to the Old, is it Tibetan? It's a wisdom book. I think we've bought out all the local texts, but we're buying it now from New York, the publisher. I don't know if they're going to restock or what the demand for this book is. It is in print, and I can get information for you if you can't locate it as to how to acquire it. We're buying it in small quantities, so we're getting a little discount now. It's called Meaningful to Behold. I think it's a wisdom book, either Wisdom or Tharpa, and I do recommend it. It's a very useful text. interesting, full of these kinds of examples. It's a Geshe Gyatso, I think. I have it next door. I didn't carry it down with me. Yeah, but it's a red book. You have it? In the library, I think. Yeah, it came out recently, three or four years ago. So you probably The other one, the one by Shantideva, Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, that one comes from India.

[44:44]

So again, we've cornered the market on that one. We've cleaned out San Francisco and the Land of the Medicine Buddha, the Tibetan group that owns Vajrapani in Boulder Creek and now Land of the Medicine Buddha. They just had a class on Shantideva. I knew they had the text there, so I asked them if they would sell any of them to us. And they said, have them all. I said, but you're going to have, he's going to teach this next month. You really feel that I can have these eight copies? She said, yeah. It's just practice, I guess. They were doing the practice. It was really impressive to me, because last weekend, They did the course down there in Soquel, and a member of the group in Carmel took it. And she said, I felt kind of embarrassed, because we had all the books, and they didn't have the text. But when I asked them, the woman said, we'll Xerox those parts of the text we need.

[45:46]

So I don't know if they did that or not. Anyway, that book, Sarah seems to have gotten some copies of that. It's in the library here. It's in the library in San Francisco Zen Center. And my guess is there'll be another shipment coming. I don't know when. Again, if you're interested, contact me afterwards and I can get some information. Can you talk a little bit about who Shantideva is? Shantideva is an 8th century Indian monk, Buddhist monk. He's very spiritually endowed. was a crown prince at birth. His father wanted him to inherit the kingdom. He had a dream, told him to become a celibate monk just before he was about to be crowned. So he left and went to the university at Nalanda and began to practice there. And because he was doing practices privately, the other monks only saw him eating, sleeping, and defecating.

[46:56]

And so they called him the three realizations. And they put him down because they thought he was a bum and he brought discredit to the university. So at some point they asked him, invited him to give a talk just to humiliate him. So he got up there and he said, do you want me to talk about something familiar or something new? And they said, oh, talk about something new. And so he delivered this discourse. He began talking about what he said was what has been written down as the guide to the Bodhisattva way of life. And what happened... See, these are the first three chapters I'm talking about today. And then he goes on to the perfections, the practices that the Bodhisattvas do. Generosity, ethical conduct, patience, energy, concentration and wisdom. Those are the practices. When Bodhisattva say, I'll do it. I'll take it on. I'll give up this mind.

[47:58]

I won't give up this mind. I'll keep scouring this mind. I'll keep watching this mind. I'll make the effort to turn this mind and body over to others. And then we practice. We do patience. We do generosity practices. We do ethical practices. We actually practice the precepts with a different energy and intention. So, as he was reciting all of this, when he got to the ninth chapter, which was wisdom, he said something about space. And as he said those words, he began to rise. And he rose out of sight. they could still hear his voice, and they were writing. And that's how the last two chapters came to be. And then there was some disagreement as to whether they had the same version, because one of the people just remembered it, because he had great powers of memory. And so they invited him back to do it again, to be sure they got it right. So that's a wonderful story. It's kind of marvelous, you know?

[49:16]

Just give it, keep it. This beautiful day, turn it over. That happy thought, turn it over. And that doesn't have to contradict everything else we're doing.

[49:28]

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